Bowling: Encyclopedia of Chicago Fact of the Day

Until the mid-twentieth century, Chicago was one of the foremost bowling hotbeds in the United States. As early as 1851 the city of Chicago had licensed five bowling alleys, and for the balance of the nineteenth century the popularity of the game and the number of bowling centers grew rapidly, centered primarily among Germans living on the North Side. By 1900 Chicago newspapers were regularly reporting results from organized bowling leagues around the city, and by 1910 the city boasted 230 bowling alleys…

Television provided a major stimulus to the sport’s increasing popularity in the 1950s. In 1952, WMAQ-TV launched Championship Bowling, a weekly one-hour show featuring taped matches between professional bowlers. For many years the shows were filmed at the Faetz-Niesen Lanes and were announced by sportscaster “Whispering” Joe Wilson. In the mid-1950s, WBKB-TV carried Universal Bowling Clinic, a weekly half-hour program featuring bowling news and lessons and cohosted by Sam Weinstein and hall-of-fame bowler Paul Krumske. Long after local bowling shows had disappeared from Chicago television, Weinstein, known as the Tenpin Tattler, carried on with a weekly radio program about bowling until the 1990s. ~Encyclopedia of Chicago